Eddie Jones has said his England group are the most ‘upbeat’ he has ever worked with.
Photograph: Steve Haag/JMP/Rex/Shutterstock

England may be down and out in the Beverly Hills, the beachfront hotel where the squad have stayed for virtually their entire South Africa tour, but no one eavesdropping on Eddie Jones in the lobby on Monday would have guessed it.

According to the England coach he has “never seen such an upbeat group” and his underperforming team are better placed to win the 2019 World Cup than they were a fortnight ago.

Given England have been beaten twice by the Springboks in eight days and slipped to sixth in the world rankings, there will be those wondering if Jones has completely mislaid his marbles. The truth is precisely the opposite: the former Australia and Japan coach has not survived this long at the top level without knowing instinctively how to divert the narrative when things go awry.

No one is more aware than Jones that England have fallen well short of their pre-tour targets but, with one Test still to play, the time has not yet quite arrived for sackcloth and ashes. Hence Jones’s insistence his squad’s World Cup outlook has brightened on this tour – “For me it is more positive” – on the basis he has given experience to players who will be better for it when they reach Japan next year.

It was a predictably canny way of deflecting the tougher debate about whether, after five consecutive Test defeats, he has taken England pretty much as far as he can. Anyone expecting Jones to congratulate the critics on their perspicacity, pack his bags and walk away from one of the highest-paid jobs in rugby was always going to be wrong-footed; few coaches in world sport are so practised in the quick-witted field of verbal self-defence.

Timeline

England's losing run

Hit for six

24 February 2018

Scotland 25-13 England

Defeat at Murrayfield was England's first against Scotland for 10 years.

10 March 2018

France 22-16 England

Eddie Jones' side succumbed to their ninth defeat in 11 meetings with France.

17 March 2018

England 15-24 Ireland

Three Six Nations defeats for England in the same campaign for the first time since 2006 saw Ireland claim the Grand Slam at Twickenham.

27 May 2018

England 45-63 Barbarians

A defeat is a defeat even in an exhibition-type game. The Baa-Baas ran in nine tries to inflict a first defeat of England in four years.

9 June 2018

South Africa 42-39 England

England threw away a 21-point lead as South Africa snatched victory from the jaws of defeat at Ellis Park.

16 June 2018

South Africa 23-12 England

England slipped to a sixth successive defeat, and lost the series in the process, with defeat in Bloemfontein. Matt Ford

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In March, after video footage surfaced of him making disparaging remarks about Wales and Irish people, he spoke about “loving” criticism and he is now employing a similar set text. “These are the great periods,” he insisted. “These are the periods you look forward to where everyone thinks you’re done and you have to find a way to win. I’m enjoying it, loving it, absolutely loving it. Every job is the same. When you are doing well, everyone pats you on the back. When you are not doing well you’re pulling knives out of your back. That’s the reality of it.

“When everything is running well, it’s easy. You’ve got your team humming, you’re winning games you shouldn’t. You get 50-50 decisions, everyone’s available, you don’t have any injuries. The hard parts are when you’ve got injuries, you’re not getting 50-50 decisions and there’s noise around. That’s where you find your worth and you find which players in your team can really stand up to pressure.”

Warming to his theme, Jones suggested he is not worried about the Rugby Football Union pulling the plug on his tenure prematurely, perhaps because he knows the union is tightening its belt financially and will be averse to paying out hefty compensation packages. “The only thing I can do is coach well,” he said. “Anything else I don’t control. If someone decides that’s not good enough, then they decide. ”

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At this precise moment England would settle for a relieving victory of any sort but Jones insists there will be no radical change in tack for the final Test in Cape Town on Saturday simply because the series has gone. The Springbok management will also be interested to hear his opinion that the only thing separating the teams has been the number of penalties – 30 compared with South Africa’s 14 – conceded by the visitors.

“The only criticism I have is that we don’t have emotional control at the right moments in games,” Jones said. “If you take the penalty try out there was nothing in the game last Saturday. All the stats show that. We are playing some great rugby. We just need more discipline and composure and to work harder off the ball. If we get those three things right this weekend, we’re going to have a superlative performance. I just hope we get the result we need to get because the players deserve it.”